To coincide with the performance of Field Notes at Spitalfields Music Summer Festival on Saturday 13th June, Matthew Harris is showing a selection of Field Notes inspired art work at 11 Princelet St, Spitalfields, London, E1 6QH. Viewings by appointment. Please contact the gallery via their website
Free pre-concert talk at the gallery from 5.15pm – 6.00pm 13th June with composer Howard Skempton, artist Matthew Harris and Stephen Newbould. The talk is free of charge but please confirm your attendance by email to info@elevenspitalfields.com
Mixed media on linen bound paper, hand stitched and dyed
Field Notes will be performed again as part of the Spitalfields Music Summer Festival at Bishopsgate Institute on Saturday 13 June, 6.30pm. Tickets are £15.
“Discover aural and visual works that explore common ideas of colour, texture and pattern.” Matthew Harris and Howard Skempton will both be there to introduce the performance.
To purchase tickets go to Spitalfields Music website
Discussing composition during the collaboration
Conducting a visual exchange of ideas in Matthew’s studio
Pittcroft Whip Ha’, pigment and dye on folded and stitched cloth, 130 x 70cm, is Matthew Harris’ completed cloth artwork for Field Notes. The name makes reference to fields listed on the ‘Leeke Survey’, a historic record of the carving and cutting up of land where fields have become fragments, floating free of any surrounding landscape. One of the starting points for Field Notes project was a visit to the Shropshire Archive which has an inspirational collection of ancient maps.
The act or folding serves several functions in the work that I make.
In the paper work or drawings its purpose is primarily to act as an agent of change; a means by which an initial image can be altered, adjusted and responded to. It allows for un-wanted imagery to be buried, for shapes to be altered and for lines to be broken and disrupted in their journey across a surface of the paper. By folding a drawn or painted image I am able to interact with it as an object and examine it from all sides in the hope of discovering something new and unexpected about the information it contains.
In the work with cloth, folding gives the fabric a strength and weight. However, more importantly it is the means by which visual information becomes embedded in the fabric. Folding brings about a compression and intensification of the visual material, burying it deep in the body of the cloth, creating strata of trapped colour, mark and line; strata that then need to be dug through and excavated in order for their contents to be revealed. This process of digging and sifting allows me to move the visual material back and forth; to turn it over and examine it in close proximity, to expose what is hidden and to cover over what is no longer needed until each piece finds its place and an image emerges.
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